A group of reproductive health lobbies yesterday staged a demonstration in Nairobi demanding that anti-abortion billboards be brought down.
In a petition addressed to Governor Mike Sonko, the activists from the Centre for Reproductive Health, the Federation of Women Lawyers, and the Women Link Worldwide, among others, argued that the messaging instills stigma against abortion. But Sozo Church of God, which sponsored the ads, dismissed the claims.
Meantime, the activists have given the county government 14 days to act or they will sue and continue their protests.
Sozo Church of God said it will not back off. One of its billboards at Westlands matatu station calls for closure of abortion clinics. Another one reads, "Abortion is murder."
The billboards are strategically located along city roads, including Nyeri Road, Oloitoktok Road, Ngong Road, Dennis Pritt Road, Waiyaki Way and University Way.
The pro-choice crusaders argue that calling for a shutdown of the clinics that provide reproductive services, including abortion, amounts to rooting for violation of the right to access to professional and accessible healthcare.
“The Constitution allows abortion services to be made available to women with life-threatening conditions, which can only be rectified through the procedures,” Martin Onyango said. He is a senior legal officer at the Centre for Reproductive Health.
“By calling for shutting down of the licensed outlets that perform this procedure, what are the sponsored of this messaging saying? They want the women of this country to resort to nondescript abortion outlets that finish their lives?”
Onyango said women in slums and poor neighbourhoods put their lives at risk because of limited reproductive health options available to them.
“Rich women in Runda, Lavington, Karen and other places check in at high-end hospitals and procure an abortion at will with much ease and no one asks them. Poor women are forced to go to quacks and die there. This we cannot allow,” he said.
But the head of Sozo Church of God, Apostle Kathy Kageni-Oganga, defended the billboards. She told the Star her outfit is “within our constitutional rights to put up such messaging because abortion is illegal in the country”.
“There is no law that allows abortion in the country, except for cases of medical emergency. Our Constitution is clear that life begins at conception. So any procedure that terminates that young life is murderous,” she said.
The pro-choice lobbies argue that women who find themselves in situations such as conception by way of rape or unplanned pregnancy should be given the right to seek abortion services. Oganga, however, said her church has put contacts for alternative reproductive health options for such cases — but not abortion.
“We've put up arrangements to accommodate women in such situations, including counselling and support. Abortion is never the right option because life is sacrosanct,” she said.
"I have four children and can have many more. I’m a rape victim myself and this is not a ticket to kill at will. We're not calling women murderous. The act of abortion is the murder here.”
(Edited by F'Orieny)
